


Full Spectrum

by missmollyetc



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Thunder
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:06:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy Oliver is old enough to know that he's out of his depth. An AU take on Power Rangers: Dino Thunder</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> This commentfic was written for the [Power Rangers Anonymous Fic Meme](http://pranonficmeme.livejournal.com/386.html?thread=1154#t1154) for the prompt: " _Tommy reveals his long-time crush on Billy._ " I wrote it kind of on the fly, and wanted to repost it here with a little more work put into it than before (spell-check, for instance, is a beautiful thing.)

Light from a security lamp bounced off the painted NASADA sign bolted above the building entrance to pool at Tommy’s feet. He shivered in the cool night air, and looked back over his shoulder at the empty parking lot. He turned back around to stare up the tall, bulky, grey length of the NASADA building, eyes flicking to the dark windows.

Government agencies and Power Rangers shouldn't know each other's phone numbers. The muscles in Tommy's back tensed up every time he had that thought. It wasn’t safe—wasn’t _right_ somehow--they had a file on him for Christ's sake--but it had happened, and Zordon was dead, most of his friends already identified and interviewed. So Tommy had smiled politely and answered all the government’s questions as badly as he could. Now, he needed those connections that TJ loved so much to help his rangers do their job. Maybe this was what Trini meant when she called something ‘ironic.’

Tommy clipped his battered old ID badge to the flap of his shirt pocket, and stepped forward to plug his entrance code into the security doors. They opened with a slight hiss of air, as he walked through the metal detector with one hand over his morpher. If the hallways were always empty when he walked down them, it was his fault for showing up at such odd hours. He never could seem to remember NASADA's workday schedule, but he didn’t feel like working up the energy it would take to keep track.

Tommy wasn’t good with memories. He had them, but he couldn’t place them, and so Kira and Trini and Jason and Connor and Kat and Kim and everyone else--every teammate he'd ever had existed in the same place inside his head, all the rangers as high-schoolers, all his friends bright and strong and young, as if Angel Grove was last week and Reefside had been ten years ago. It made it difficult to talk with the others sometimes. School work was usually safe though, the things his senseis taught him seem to work no matter where he was, and being a ranger made all his choices, even the hard ones, seem clear.

Tommy rubbed his hands together, and wiped his palms down his black shirt. He took a left under the sign reading 'Communication and Retrieval' down a short hallway. The grey-flecked tile beneath his feet soon gave way to concrete. It matched the walls; there was precious little money for NASADA these days, Cassie had mentioned once, and what they'd got was covered in earmarks.

The door to the control room was locked, but Tommy's passkey had the override. He flipped on the lights one-handed as he walked into the room. The main board was surrounded by blinking servers, dwarfing the office chair placed in front of the monitor. The equipment was light years behind the toys Billy used to make for him--for the team, but NASADA had a backdoor into the operational controls for the VLA telescope array in San Agustin. It was the only one with enough range. He’d just have to remember to be careful about what he said.

The chair was directly in line of sight from the front of the door, and Tommy had to make a conscious decision to sit down with his back to the hallway. He winced as the springs in the seat squeaked beneath him. The main computer was too large to shut down, and woke up from sleep mode after a few key strokes. He inserted the flash drive into the USB port, and the program loaded automatically. He took a deep breath as the computer screen flickered to life, and exhaled, finding his center.

There was a short pause as the screen erupted in lines of code, scrambling to keep up with the signal it was being ordered to send out, and overloading the buffer. The fans built into the CPUs above and below the main console whirred into life, just as the speakers crackled with white noise. The computer beeped twice and held on the third tone, rising in pitch until the sound poked needles into Tommy’s ears. He winced, covering one side of his head, and then the computer's webcam light flicked on; the noise cut out abruptly.

Billy looked surprised to see him. Tommy rubbed his ear with his palm, and let his hand fall to his lap. He cleared his throat.

“Hey there, buddy,” he said into the sudden quiet.

Billy opened his mouth, squinting into his camera. He scratched the flaky, dried skin latticed across his cheekbones. Life in the salt sea didn’t agree with people born on land. Sometimes, Tommy wished he’d remembered to tell Billy that.

"I must apologize for my obtuseness," Billy finally said, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses, "but to what do I owe this honor? It’s neither my birthday nor yours, for that matter."

His hair stood up in licks all over his head, and his skin was pale. Billy almost looked like he had before he left, all tired eyes and nervous twitches. The memory of it hit Tommy like a bolt. His throat dried, and he coughed, swallowing. Maybe this was a good idea after all. Maybe it wasn’t just him being selfish.

"I've got a job for you, buddy," he said. "I need your help."

Billy's eyes sharpened. He sat up, leaning forward, and the shiny Aquitian tunic he wore bunched up over his shoulders. Behind him, Tommy could see an unmade bed, empty. He’d lived alone since the separation. Tommy rubbed his hands up and down his thighs.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Billy asked. "Is it--wait, where are you? I'm afraid I fail to recognize your location."

Billy's shoulders flexed as he spoke, and Tommy realized he must be typing, following the signal from the array on Halspa Station near Sirius to the relay satellite on Eltar and down through San Agustin to Tommy. Tommy leaned back, watching Billy's laser focus backtrack his trail, and waiting to be caught. It was a nice feeling to be someone's goal.

"You're at NASADA," Billy said, finally. His typing grew louder, as if his fingers where smacking down the keys.

Tommy grinned, and lifted his hand in front of the screen so that Billy could see his new morpher. "I'm at NASADA," he agreed. "They let me borrow some equipment."

Billy's eyes widened behind his glasses, and Tommy had a quick flash of something—some day when those silly thick frames had balanced on the top of Billy's head, pushed up to make some kind of point. Tommy shivered a little, and pulled at the cuffs of his shirt. He never remembered so much as he did when he was talking to Billy. Kim and Kat made him want to remember, but Billy had always made it happen. Around Billy everything seemed a little more clear, to have a logical progression. Tommy had trusted that once. He’d learned to rely upon it like it would never be taken away, until the Zeo Crystal had bled it from him. Now, he took it when he could get it; it must be what normal people felt like all the time when they remembered, this cascading sense of completion.

"When did this happen?" Billy asked. He held up one hand, still typing with the other. “I thought you’d completed your consultation work.”

Billy scratched underneath his chin, drawing red lines all the way to his throat. His knuckles looked rubbed raw. Tommy paused, watching Billy's face. In the back of his head, he could feel a memory break free, and then drag a chain of images along behind it. Billy wasn’t happy in any of them, holed up in the Zord bay growing quiet and resigned and bitter, and Tommy couldn’t remember caring because he was burning in those memories, dissolving in the constant rush of the Zeo power, and there was nothing to hold on to that wanted to be held. Emotions were a habit when he had been Zeo Red. It was only afterwards that he’d remembered how to feel them.

The silence moved from expectant to uncomfortable. Billy cleared his throat.

“There,” he said. “I’ve circumvented their recording software. We should be able to speak with impunity. That means—”

“I know what it means,” Tommy said, clenching his hand into a fist in his lap.

Billy’s upraised hand dropped out of sight. His lips twisted as he nodded curtly.

"Who wrote this program?" Billy asked, changing the subject. "I bounced through at least six terrestrial nexi just to get off Aquitar. It's positively fiendish."

Tommy snorted, and felt his mouth twitch upwards. Billy looked up, lips quirking. "Hayley," Tommy said. "A friend of mine from college. I think it's her version of an early Christmas present."

"Sorry?" Billy repeats, blinking rapidly. "Could you extrapolate, please?"

Thank God for college. It was so much easier to speak to Billy now. Tommy shook his head, and pointed backwards towards the door over his shoulder. The screen was big enough for Billy to see the blinking light of the security camera on the back wall. "She and I...NASADA is very helpful," he said, "but their idea of security is still putting my picture on my access card."

Billy raised his eyebrows. He licked his lips, and grinned. "I'm sure that will be most...helpful."

"All of our evil twins out there agree with you."

Billy laughed, and Tommy was torn between closing his eyes to savor the sound, and watching Billy, live and in front of him, for as long as he could. He was an old soldier, he'd live with the indecision.

"So," Billy said, leaning back in his chair. "How may I be of service to the World's Oldest Ranger?"

"Hey," Tommy said, straightening. "I'm not that old."

"Of course not," Billy said. "That would imply that I, myself, have aged, wouldn't it?"

"Perish the thought."

Billy laughed again, tilting his head back, and Tommy leaned forward in his squeaking chair, watching the movement of Billy's throat. It was a stupid move. The boy he’d been wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now he was supposed to be a grown up. He was going to be caught, but he’s always been foolish next to Billy, even back before he knew exactly why.

A memory came to him; one that floated up when he was lonely and refused to go away until he was raising his wrist to his mouth like there was a communicator still there. Only a small thing, barely anything, and the edges of it were worn so smooth that all he had left was the tingling in his fingertips, and the sense memory of standing in Zordon's command center, sick with Rita's poison and the blasting ice of Zordon's cure, and of Billy reaching out to him, taking his hand. If Tommy concentrated, and he could when it was important, he could see Billy just as he had been. Standing as one among many to greet him, but with his helmet tucked under one arm, and his flyaway blond hair sprayed in a fan on the left side of his head. Taking Tommy's hand, and holding on just long enough for all the other hands--Kim's at his back and Jason's on his shoulder--to fade away.

It was a good memory. It felt...permanent.

Billy lowered his head, and Tommy looked away, feeling heat flare up the back of his neck. He looked back, and Billy was staring at him. Tommy could practically see the wheels turning in the back of Billy's head. He hadn’t truly seen Billy in years; the quick birthday databursts didn’t cut it. Billy was grown, solid with swimmer’s muscles and laugh lines at his eyes. Tommy wanted…well, it was just an ache these days, but at least he knew it for what it was.

"I need you to come home," Tommy said, and it was enough to derail Billy entirely.

"Home?" he repeated. "To Angel Grove? Tommy, what's happened?"

Tommy shook his head, and swallowed against the sudden constriction in his throat. “No, to Reefside. I mean—” he shook his head again. “Billy, I messed up. I took the dino gems, and built the holding chamber according to the schematics you and Trini worked up, but my students found them anyway and now Mesagog is on our tails. I can’t—”

Billy’s mouth thinned to a line. He glanced down, and took a deep breath. “You want me to build things for you,” he said quietly.

Tommy swallowed. He felt his shoulders start to inch their way up his neck. It was always a bad sign when Billy forgot to add syllables.

“I have a home here,” Billy continued. “I can’t just—”

“You told Kim you’d finished your research a month ago,” Tommy burst in. “You haven’t—”

Billy held up his hand, and Tommy could see he was wearing the neutronic drain device he’d created to visit his father on Earth. It was self-sustaining; Billy could come back and stay for as long as he wanted. He’d admitted as much to Jason, and Jason had told Tommy.

“I’ve still got work,” Billy said. “I’m a licensed scientist on Aquitar, and on Earth I don’t even have a high school degree.”

“You don’t need one to work on the zords,” Tommy said. “Hell, take the GED if it makes you feel better.”

“Oh well, thank you Mr. Oliver for that stirring recruitment pitch.”

“That’s Doctor Oliver, actually.”

Billy snorted, and rubbed his hands over his eyes, pushing his glasses up to his hairline. “Doctor Oliver,” he muttered.

Tommy clenched his hands into fists. “Hey!”

“Oh what,” Billy smacked his hands onto the desk, and the picture of Tommy’s screen wavered, “am I not allowed to be surprised that a man I once had to create a memory alarm for—which he forgot, if you can remember—managed to recover enough of his faculties to receive his graduate degree before I did?”

Tommy sat back in his chair, and forced himself to relax his hands. He pushed his right thumb into his left palm until the muscles gave up their tension.

“I’m not stupid,” he said quietly.

Billy frowned, and dropped his eyes. He nodded, jerking his head up and down. “My most profuse apologies,” he said.

Tommy shrugged, even though Billy couldn’t see it. He sighed. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go.”

Billy caught his eye, and adjusted his glasses with one hand. “No, I’m sure it isn’t.”

Tommy put his elbows to either side of his keyboard, and leaned forward, making sure to keep eye contact. “Billy, I need you,” he said. “I—”

He broke off, glancing away, and banged his fist on the table. “You know I can’t be their mentor, and their teammate at the same time. Connor’s their red, and I—”

“You’re not red?” Billy asked. “Tommy, look at me, who’s Connor?”

Tommy looked up to see Billy’s face much closer onscreen. Billy pushed his glasses back up his nose, and Tommy’s fingers twitched.

“Connor’s my student,” Tommy said, “at the high school where I teach. All the rangers are, now.”

“Oh frabjous day,” Billy muttered.

“What?”

Billy shook his head. “Nothing, never mind,” he said. “But what color does that make you? You’re—you’re not green again, are you?”

Tommy swallowed, and shifted in this chair. “Black,” he said. “I’m the black ranger.”

There was silence down the signal. Billy seemed frozen, and for a second Tommy thought the array had gone down, but then Billy’s mouth twitched upwards on a smirk. Tommy groaned, rolling his eyes. Here it came.

“What is this?” Billy asked, laughing. “Do you just have the Morphin Grid set up as a roulette wheel?”

“Oh come on, I can’t help it!”

“These occurrences simply multiply around you, huh?” Billy asked, still chuckling.

“Yes,” Tommy said, crossing his arms. “They do.”

Billy laughed again, and threw his back. The tunic he wore parted at the neck, pulling away from his collarbones, and Tommy’s breath hitched.

When they were younger, Tommy had thought Billy’s intelligence just made him uncomfortable, and then that Billy and Kim were too close. It hadn’t fit into what he’d known about himself, after all, and if he watched Billy a little more closely than the others he’d always had an explanation ready if someone caught on. No one ever had. Maybe Kim had; she was better at people than anyone he’d ever known.

He opened his mouth to say ‘I need your expertise,’ and ‘Hayley has her own life, I can’t ask her to give it up now,’ and all the reasons he’d thought up and laid out to make Billy understand how much the team—how much the Earth—needed him to come back, but when Billy stopped laughing and looked at him, smiling, a little red in the face, what came out was:

“I used to watch you, you know.”

Billy stopped smiling. Maybe it was his tone, Tommy hadn’t meant it to sound so rough, but his throat had closed on his last words and it had hurt.

“I know,” Billy said, and Tommy felt the shock of it like a blow to his chest.

“I remember how it felt,” Billy said. “I formulated all manner of hypotheses to understand its meaning.”

Tommy nodded. He licked his lips. The color was still high on Billy’s cheeks, bright beneath the white dead skin, and Tommy’s fingers twitched again. Tanya had told him Billy was taking care of himself; she’d promised.

Billy’s eyes were large behind his glasses, a darkened blue. “I remember how it felt when you stopped.”

Tommy sucked in air, and jerked in his chair. He felt his heartbeat thump against his ribs, kicking itself into high gear.

“I didn’t—” Tommy cleared his throat and raised his voice enough to be heard. “I didn’t know…how to be…I didn’t know what it meant to watch you,” he said. “And I was…I loved Kim.”

Billy nodded. “At the risk of derailment, so did I.”

Tommy jerked his head up and then down. “So there was that, and the powers…there were days I couldn’t even think, but you…you always made it clear.”

Billy raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid I can remember several lengthy tirades as testimony that I do _not_ possess the gift of clarity, Tommy.”

“Not _that_.” Tommy slashed one hand through the air in front of the screen. “ _Me_ , all right? You always knew what to do, and it helped me…focus. I knew where I was with you. You always made it better.”

Billy sat back in his chair, and Tommy took a breath. His chest hurt a little, as if he’d been straining to move something heavy.

“I do believe,” Billy said slowly, “that that is one of the better accolades I’ve received during my lifetime.”

Tommy shrugged, and ducked his head. He pressed his fist to his chest, and coughed.

“I can’t be your Alpha,” Billy said. “I won’t be there to be used.”

Tommy looked up quickly. “You won’t be. Billy, you _couldn’t._ ”

His breath came faster. It was happening; he could see plans erupting in Billy’s mind, the zords, the battles, and the joy of creating something so wonderful it couldn’t be human building in the flush of color along Billy’s cheeks.

“I have,” Billy cleared his throat and licked his lips, eyes glued to Tommy’s face. “I again have field experience to the contrary.”

Tommy shook his head, leaning forward in his chair. “This isn’t the Zeo power,” he said, “and I’m not a boy. I can’t—I know myself now. Please.”

He touched the screen, put his fingers where the picture showed him Billy’s neck. Billy blinked rapidly, and shivered.

“I don’t need an Alpha for my kids, Billy,” Tommy said, and his heart turned over in his chest, racing like he was taking on an army. “I need a Zordon for my team.”

No memories popped up now, nothing of what they were then. Tommy could only see Billy as he sat, taller, older, with a glow in his eyes and parted lips.

“Well then,” Billy said, and his breath seemed to be coming just as fast as Tommy’s. “How could I not acquiesce in the face of such compliments?”

Tommy’s hand dropped from the screen with a bang. He felt like running, like bursting out of his chair, and racing to Aquitar himself. He could make it in twenty or a hundred years or so.

“You’ll come?” he asked, just to make sure.

“I’m coming,” Billy said. “I hope you’ve got some idea of where I might stay, but I’m coming.”

Tommy grinned until his lips hurt, but it didn’t matter, because Billy was smiling just as hard. “I’ve got a couch,” he said.

“A couch? How…collegiate,” Billy said.

Tommy laughed. “It has a pull out bed.”

Billy nodded, still smiling. “Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to work with that.”


End file.
